Posted on June 3, 2021
Blind Cherub’s 1-bit art for Cara Neir’s “Valkyrie”
Today I stumbled on the Juan Vizcarra’s (aka Blind Cherub) twitter page and spent some time looking through their 1-bit style art. There are lots of great pieces there, but one that really caught my eye was a looping animation created to accompany “Valkyrie“, a great song off of Cara Neir’s Phase Out.
“1-bit animation for our song Valkyrie. Track 4 from Phase Out. Animation by Juan Vizcarra. In our lore, Valkyrie is one of the subservient mini-bosses to The One From Trimjrtle. She wields an ancient spear that emits blasts of blinding energy. She has slain many warriors in The One’s trials before, but perhaps she will meet her match one day as she awaits our arrival.”
from the youtube description
Cara Neir also commissioned other artists to create short animations that go with the rest of the songs from their newest album, Phase Out. You can buy the album here or watch the full playlist on Youtube here.
Posted on May 30, 2021
Trick Battle: Me VS Ed
This month was 5A May, the time of the year where yo-yoers celebrate the wonders of using a yo-yo with a counterweight attached to the end. I released a special episode of my PopCast yo-yo vlog, a 3D file for a counterweight, and a bunch of videos on Instagram, but I also took part in a “battle” with Ed Haponik on a livestreaming app call Livee.
Ed and I both competed using responsive yo-yos with counterweights attached to them. The crowd voted and I won! It was great to chat with Ed afterwards and I’ve been really stoked to see how quickly he’s learned 5A and carved out his own unique style.
You can watch the video here.
Posted on May 23, 2021
Why Undefined is the most popular user on Thingiverse
I recently signed up for Thingiverse and noticed it was just a buggy nightmare. I tried uploading my first design a few weeks ago, but it seems to just be stuck in limbo. It shows that I have successfully uploaded one design uploaded, but designs appear on my design page. I have no way to find it, edit it, or share it. It’s just stuck in the ether.
The most interesting bug I noticed though was that I was mysteriously following a user I’ve never heard of. Their username was Undefined and they had only uploaded to the site once back in 2014. You might think the site just automatically makes you follow some random user when you sign up, but I don’t think that was their intention.
It turns out that Undefined is easily the most popular user on Thingiverse, with nearly 5 times more followers than any other account.
I also noticed other users asking why they were “forced” to follow Undefined.
Some of y’all big brains may have already figured this out, but it appears that Undefined’s popularity is due to a bug in the database. For instance if a new user is following=0, the system sees that as an undefined number, and results in the user following Undefined.
A quick search on the Wayback Machine shows that Undefined had 5 followers in 2017, so this bug started sometime in the past four years and 130,000 users have signed up since it was introduced.
I’m officially adding “Undefined” to my list of clever usernames to grab on future sites.
Posted on May 10, 2021
Astro Style Yo-Yoing
I just uploaded a new episode of PopCast about a style of yo-yoing called Astro. Astro is a sub-style of counterweight play that uses two weights instead of one.
To go along with this video, I’ve also released a few Astro weight designs that you can download and print out on a 3D printer. These files are available on my Github with a very friendly license, you can remix them, share them, and even sell them if you like. If you end up manufacturing these, send me a set and tell me about your shop so I can help spread the word.
